This Music Video Tells a Story Entirely Through GIFs That Aren't Actually GIFS

A new video by The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart recreates the feel of GIFs with actors locked in repetitive movements. It is cute, clever, and disturbing

Pity the GIF'd person. He or she is stuck there forever like that, in an endless micro-Groundhog Day of repetitive action. Editors constantly ransack films (like Groundhog Day) in search of "GIF-able moments" to deliver these characters unto the Internet and keep the treadmill moving. Those editors wouldn't have to look very hard in the new Pains of Being Pure At Heart video, though: it's made entirely of scenes with performers apparently trapped in a GIF-loop.

Created by Brooklyn-based collective BANGS, "Simple and Sure" takes place at a dinner party, the spookiest fancy dinner party you've ever visited in a nightmare. Every clinking wineglass, hair flip, and eye-roll seems to occur in perpetuity, drained of color. At first, the clever conceit seems to be that the video is just made up of sequential GIF'd moments of scenes already shot and tweaked. As the video goes on, though, the almost violent dance sequences assure you that these GIFs are occurring in camera. It must have been laborious to film, but it's a much needed tonic for anyone who sometimes feels like the media's reliance on GIFs has turned it into an inescapable dinner party.

Don't be surprised when GIFs from this video end up in one of your feeds.

The new Pains of Being Pure at Heart album, Days of Abandon, is out on May 13.